Approved environmental associations must be able to challenge in court an EC type-approval of vehicles equipped with “defeat devices” that may be prohibited, said Advocate General Athanasios Rantos in his opinion to the Court of Justice of the European Union on Thursday (Case C-873/19).
The German environmental association Deutsche Umwelthilfe is challenging the decision of the German Federal Motor Vehicle Authority to allow Volkswagen to equip Euro 5 diesel vehicles with built-in software which, under certain outside temperature conditions, reduces exhaust gas recirculation and thereby increases nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.
With the Administrative Court of Schleswig-Holstein referring the matter to the Court, the Advocate General is of the opinion that the Aarhus Convention, read in conjunction with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, imposes an obligation on Member States to ensure effective judicial protection of the rights conferred by Union law in environmental matters. In this respect, he adds, the norms of EU environmental law are, in most cases, oriented towards general interest and it is very much the environmental associations that have the task of defending this general interest.
According to Rantos, Deutsche Umwelt is therefore entitled to bring legal proceedings to challenge an administrative decision granting EC type-approval of vehicles that may prove contrary to the prohibition of defeat devices.
In response to the question of whether the “need” for a defeat device is to be assessed according to the state of the art at the time when the EC type-approval is granted, the Advocate General replied that it could not. The Regulation (715/2007) on the type-approval of motor vehicles (Euro 5 and Euro 6), as amended by Regulation (692/2008) of July 2008, is designed to be technology-neutral, he noted.
Car manufacturers therefore simply have to apply appropriate technical means to comply with the limit values, without the technology used necessarily being the best possible one or being required.
See the opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/lp (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)